Andy Steward comes into your classroom, sits at the back watching you teach and then calls a meeting and tells you everything you did wrong and what you ought to do about it. He’s not a manager, and he’s not an Ofsted inspector. Andy is a staff coach - and, as a classroom teacher himself, he is on your side.

His role is part of an ambitious series of developments at Withywood community school in Bristol aimed at transforming the comprehensive’s environment, not only for teachers but for its 950 pupils, too.

A former acting head on the south coast, Mr Steward came to Withywood three years ago, keen to get involved in staff coaching. “I have a history of working in professional development and pastoral care,” he says, “and a forward-thinking head, who sees we have all these pressures and a way of matching up a human resource with these needs.”

But in the current climate of performance management, wouldn’t a teacher have to be mad to expose himself or herself to this sort of scrutiny? “A staff coach is first of all a teacher,” says Mr Steward, a humanities specialist. “Half my job is teaching and the other half is advising staff on teaching and learning strategies.

“The rules we negotiated at the start mean it’s voluntary and confidential. Teachers perceive that they have some areas for development - a problem with a particular class or an aspect of practice - and approach me, independently of their line manager.

“The beauty of it is that it’s separate from the culture of performance management. Other schools are doing it, but I’m in a unique position because as a teacher, not a manager, I’m not seen as ‘one of them’. I’m not going to put anything down on paper we haven’t agreed.”

As a coach, he offers varying levels of support depending on the teacher and the extent of his or her difficulties. Some have faced problems coping with a particular class or student: others just want to raise their game.

“Some are having a hard time,” he says, “but we also get those who think, ‘I’m doing OK, but for some reason I’m not getting the levels of pupil achievement I want’. We have an initial meeting to define the problem; then I come into class and see if I can pick up on things they might not have noticed or not tried. Then we have a chat about ways of organising the class or introducing the lesson differently. They try that for an agreed period, say two or three weeks, then I go back and see how things are shaping up.

“It’s the funny little things that make a difference. You might find a right-handed teacher takes more than half the responses from the right-hand side of the class. They might not even be aware of it until someone sits there and watches them doing it.”

Doesn’t he become simply a shoulder to cry on? “There’s an element of counselling but I try to keep it purely professional. If any teachers really had problems, I would say they should discuss them with someone else. I’m helping them do their job better - and that makes them feel better about themselves - but I’m not the staff counsellor.”

Team teaching is just one of Mr Steward’s techniques. “If I’ve been working with a teacher for a while but he or she is not satisfied with progress, we’ll sit down and plan a lesson together,” he says. “Then we’ll split that lesson into chunks and each teach a bit and observe the other. With this, you can quickly pass on the techniques that work.

“I also use a video camera, so teachers can sit at home with a tape and watch their body language - how they move round the room, how often they use praise, encouraging pupils to be self-evaluating and self-reflective.”

Isn’t the camera distracting, even intimidating? “There’s a bit of observer effect, but I encourage them to ignore it: in a classroom you have so many plates to spin that the eye at the back of the room doesn’t intrude that much.”

In contrast to this hi-tech approach, Mr Steward also helps colleagues make best use of their most basic tool: their voice. “When people get stressed the voice is the first thing to go,” he says. “It might start getting higher, and the kids will notice and push a bit harder.

“An Alexander technique teacher I know has come in and advised on simple techniques such as breathing and using pauses. It’s incredible how long a pause can feel. Less is more.”

As well as seeking help one-on-one, staff can also use the weekly in-service training sessions he runs. Attendance is voluntary, and teachers’ input decides the subjects addressed. But Mr Steward doesn’t work only with teachers. Underlying all the developments at Withywood is a recognition that staff alone can only do so much. To achieve the school’s long-term ambitions, students’ attitudes and expectations must change too.

“This is an inner-city school: historically, more than 40 per cent of the kids have been on free meals,” he says. “They have traditionally had problems with low self-esteem and get attention by misbehaving. You have to convince them they can get recognition because of their work. If you can praise children for good work, you’re not criticising them for poor behaviour. That’s the objective. One of our catchphrases is, ‘Catch them red-handed doing something right’. We want lots of opportunities to say positive things.”

Mr Steward has also been involved with the creation of a formal, timetabled behaviour curriculum. Later this year he will spend a week with Bristol’s Improving Behaviour in Secondary Schools unit to prepare for what he calls “a gamble” - but an interesting gamble. “Next year, we’re taking some of Year 7‘s curriculum time to coach them in team-building, social skills, self-esteem. They’ll have an academic morning, with input from the tutor about these issues and learning to work with other people, and then an activity-based afternoon with drama, PE and so on, where they put the ideas into practice.

“We’ll evaluate it at the end of next year, though that’ll be difficult because the proof will come in improved academic performance higher up the school.”

Two-and-a-half years into his new role, Mr Steward sees staff coaching as essential to Withywood’s vision of itself as a place where achievement is open to everyone, not just the students. “We want to be seen as a learning institution but we don’t want people thinking in-service training means going on 20 courses a year,” he says. “It’s not about overhead projectors and men in suits. What you really need to know might be happening in the next-door classroom.”